The aim of Changemakers is to support students to explore practical techniques to make change happen through a series of interactive activities. In today’s event, we’ve been delighted to welcome many schools from different parts of Wales participating in online workshops, change pledges, real-life examples of campaigns, etc.
The conference started with a quiz for everyone to participate about general knowledge, facts about Wales, and global issues in general; which has led to speaking of SDG’s, climate change and how to develop peacebuilding, among other global issues.
After this conversation, every school has chosen which inspiring workshop to join:
1. Rainforest workshop by Size of Wales
Finding out all about the importance of tropical rainforests and learning how we can all help to protect our precious forests.
2. Campaigning (Making Campaigns Count) by Fair Trade Wales
The first step was to find out what we wanted to campaign about. Some of the issues that pupils found important were equal pay, gender equality, diversity and human rights. But how do get people to know more about it?
The students from the school Ysgol Maesydderwen decided to create a social media post for raising awareness about gender equality.
We’ve seen some examples of campaigns from Fair Trade Wales as “Tesco Bananas” or “Fairly Traded” and learned how to use digital communication and evaluation tools.
3. Making a Change for Peace – Jane Harries
The aim of the workshop was to explore what it means to be a changemaker for peace, share some examples of what schools have done to create peace and sustainability, share some tools for creating change and start planning what their peace campaign will look like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKDgFCojiT8
Finally, every school has been invited to contribute a change project they have done. We have ended the session by sharing good practices and pledges to make our world a better place. Here are some examples:
- Reducing conflict as part of our peace school pledge
- Understanding the right of a child
- Donations to charities like team trees to plant trees
- Ride my bike/walk to school more often (fewer cars)
- To turn off my devices when not using them
- We are having a food bank in school so we can help the local community
- Put signs up to turn off taps, lights and computers.
- Open channels of communication between people in Wales, Russia and Ukraine so that we can learn about and talk to one another
- Litter picking
- No shop year – attempt to clothes shop only from second-hand sources for 1 year
Changemakers is a fantastic way to engage students with the ethical citizenship purpose of the Curriculum in Wales, create changes and learn about their voice in the wider world.